What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies right to our faces.

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

Redefining Words When Fudging Numbers Wasn't Enough

I know that I can tend to get fixated on all the artificial sciences, and other rigged statistics we are too often bombarded with. Let's face it, sometimes it's like shooting fish in a barrel to point out that 'the unemployment rate remaining steady for months' is not a sign of moderate growth, and 'the rising price in the housing market' not actually levelling off to meet an apparent non-growth in household income is more likely a sign of bad people doing bad things... And as for the stock market rebound, if you drop a dead cat from high enough, it will bounce, but that does not mean it's alive.

I am not angry about such things regardless of my tone, in fact, I find much of it makes me laugh. I simply point things out as I see them because I am acutely aware that all of these things are generating a hypnotic hum outside of the auditory spectrum that even dogs can barely hear. It's not really about trying to resist the vacuous draw of the entire freakshow because that's impossible. But once recognised as being exactly what it is, it loses any ability to draw you in at all.

I do realise that some level of my awareness was quite likely gifted to me because on a certain level, it's always been there, but, on many other levels it's been a practised skill fed by endless curiosity.

Here is a curious question: is a 5525 mile-long wall meant to keep people out, or in? I know that Canada has already defeated the U.S. invasion in the war of 1812, and burned down it's own parliament once, but most people have forgotten all about these events, so they could hardly serve as proof of present intentions. Besides, we've built the underground railroad once too, so I'm really losing sight of the purpose here. Maybe, just maybe, a wall is in Canada's interests in keeping out the riff-raff.

It looks as though I'm ending where I started in the science of bad numbers... Except now we are redefining words when we can't fudge the numbers enough to match a desired outcome...